‘We have been working on this for months,’ Sædís said and Gunna sensed her urgency. ‘Since the beginning of the year. If we can follow Logi back with whatever he’s carrying and jump in at the handover point, it’ll be a massive step towards cracking the Undertakers’ drug ring. They’ve been investing in other scams as well, and Logi was working on fitting out a showroom for a car sales business they’re financing, which we believe is a front for shipping stolen cars out of the country. Drugs is still where their big money comes from, though.’
‘I think we have to, don’t you, Gunnhildur?’ Ívar Laxdal said softly.
‘If you say so,’ Gunna said. ‘I’m just concerned that he might not come back at all.’
Logi slept for most of the day. He was surprised to wake up hungry and shivering, with the car deep in the shadow of the trees. He drove through the afternoon sunshine, along the dusty road, certain that any search for him would at least have been widened out to include the city by now. He pushed the tired pickup onto the old road that ran around Hvalfjördur. It had once been part of the main road that ran around the country, until the tunnel had been built, and since then it did little more than serve the summer chalets and holidaymakers, who weren’t in a hurry. It suited his purpose perfectly, as he preferred to keep clear of the main roads until he could be fairly sure of being able to lose himself in thick traffic.
He took the inland route towards Thingvellir and then took the turning towards Reykjavík, joining the main road at Mosfellsbær. He stopped at a filling station and bought himself a burger and a carton of chips, sitting in the window and leafing through the paper, looking for reports of police searching for a mysterious criminal in a dark blue Toyota pickup, but the pages of the free papers seemed to be devoted to fashion and gossip rather than news.
The burger finished, he fetched himself a coffee and punched Rafn’s number into his anonymous mobile phone.
‘Hæ. It’s Logi.’
‘You’re back in town, are you?’
‘I will be soon.’
‘There’s a late flight or an early-morning one tomorrow. Let me know and I’ll set things up.’
‘Let’s make it tonight. What time?’
‘Ten. You’ll need to be at the airport around eight thirty. Danni can take you out there.’
‘Suits me.’
‘Where are you going now?’
‘Nowhere special.’
‘Meet me at the Emperor at six,’ Rafn instructed, and the line went dead before Logi could say anything more.
‘I hope you’re right,’ Gunna said and squinted at her toes, wiggling them as her feet lay in Steini’s lap.
‘I hope so as well, Gunnhildur,’ Ívar Laxdal said gravely. ‘Logi has been monitored at Keflavík and he caught his flight, as Sædís and her team had expected.’
Gunna put her hand over her mouth and stifled a yawn, holding the phone away from her ear as she did so and catching Steini’s wry smile.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long day.’
‘And a long one tomorrow as well, I’d guess. Making sense of Stefán and Aníta Sól is going to take days, plus we need to come down hard on Alli the Cornershop. Neither of the former is exactly bright, but Alli is as sharp as a knife.’
She heard Ívar Laxdal sigh. ‘I know. But you have the perpetrator, you have the weapon and he has the motive. You still think he’s not the guilty one?’
‘I’m not convinced. That’s why I was so reluctant to let Logi out of the country. Suppose he’s the killer? If he doesn’t come back, then I reckon we’ll have let our murderer go.’
She could tell from the sharp intake of breath down the phone line that he didn’t share her opinion. ‘Sædís and her team are liaising with the police at the other end of the operation. If it looks like Logi is going to depart from the script, then they’ll pick him up for us.’
‘I hope so,’ Gunna said, yawning, and this time she didn’t try to hide it.
Ívar Laxdal took the hint.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Gunnhildur,’ he said. ‘Give my regards to Steini, would you?’
She put the phone down and stretched, her head on the sofa’s armrest and her feet across Steini’s lap.
‘Ívar Laxdal sends you his regards,’ she said.
‘And my regards to the Laxdal when you see him tomorrow.’ Steini put his book down. ‘Are you going to be late?’
‘I wouldn’t think so. The bad guy’s in hospital being watched and feeling sorry for himself, so back to normal hours, or so I’d hope.’
‘Can’t have you bankrupting the state with all this overtime, can we?’ Steini asked, the wry smile returning. ‘So you’ll be back for dinner? I think Gísli’s back tomorrow as well. You want to ask Drífa and Kjartan over too?’
Thursday
Logi was sure he was being watched. There was no reason for thinking this, other than simple gut feeling, but he fidgeted at the airport bar and didn’t start to relax until he had boarded the cramped bucket airline flight and the steward had begun the safety instructions as the aircraft taxied onto the runway.
A couple of beers helped him sleep, and when he woke up with the announcement that they were almost at their destination, the thick darkness through the porthole window took him by surprise after the bright Icelandic summer.
He watched his surroundings as carefully as he could, trying to make out if he might be being tailed. Certainly nobody who had been on the flight was taking any notice of him as he waited among tired travellers and their fractious children for the baggage to arrive.
A bus took him to an anonymous airport hotel and a clean but narrow bed that was fragrant and comfortable compared to the floor at the house in Kaldidalur.
Logi slept late and the dining room was practically deserted by the time he turned up for breakfast on a plastic tray and coffee that seemed spicier and thicker than the stuff he was used to at home. It felt distinctly odd, almost uncomfortable, to be awake this late in the day and not to have work waiting for him somewhere.
He sat for a long time over breakfast and accepted a second pot of coffee as he thought over the events of the past few days. He knew little of what had happened, wondering what had become of Stefán and whether or not the police had interrogated him. He wondered if the man’s hand could be saved, grimacing at the thought of the ribbed nail pinning his hand to the length of timber and imagining the pain.
He dismissed any sympathy he might have had for Stefán. The man would have done the same or worse to him without turning a hair. He wondered about Danni, who had been unusually nervous on the drive out to the airport, and he had to admit that Danni’s impatience was the main reason he was worried that he might be being followed. Was he being set up? If so, it was difficult to explain why, although Rafn would hardly be sending him all this way just to let him get caught. Danni, however, was another matter. He had thought about giving Danni at least part of the quarter million to give to Sandra, but the nagging doubt that it might never reach her dissuaded him, and he bought as many euros as he could for it instead.
Logi left the hotel undecided. The pickup was to take place that afternoon and he was due to fly home on Friday morning. The address was stored in his phone. He had no illusions about what he was letting himself in for. A successful trip would mean a pocketful of cash and an unsuccessful trip could mean five years in prison, depending on what Rafn wanted to import. Was there a real alternative, he wondered?
He took his hand baggage with him, leaving his suitcase in the room. In reality, he had no need of a suitcase. Everything he required fitted in the little backpack. The suitcase was just there for Rafn’s merchandise. He waved to the girl behind the reception desk as he walked out of the door, leaving his options open.
His train of thought continued on the bus into the city, where he walked aimlessly among the canals and trees. He ate a leisurely omelette with chips and salad sitting at a table on the street outside a café, watching the passers-by and t
rying to figure out if any of them walked past more than once. After a second beer he was still wondering and looked at his watch. Three hours to go.
He walked slowly through the streets, looking in shop windows and admiring the view and the girls on bicycles. After an hour he went to another café and ordered a coffee with a slice of cake to go with it, indulging himself, he decided.
‘Is there a cheap hotel around here?’ he asked the waiter who brought him his cake and coffee.
‘Depends what you mean by cheap,’ the waiter replied in easy English. ‘You want cheap and comfortable, or really cheap?’
‘Cheap and comfortable is better.’
‘When you’ve finished your coffee, go along the street and there’s a turning on the right. Down that road there’s a small pension. Say Marcel sent you.’
Logi nodded. ‘Thanks.’
He left what felt like a generous tip for the waiter and walked slowly, looking around like an aimless tourist, deliberately passing the turning and taking the next one, so he needed to double back through back streets, which gave him the opportunity to see the place from behind. Pension Alois didn’t look friendly, and the man who answered the ring of the bell at the desk shrugged when he said that Marcel had sent him.
‘How many nights?’
‘Two, maybe three. Is that all right?’
‘Two nights is fine. We have to see with the third night. We’re busy at the moment.’ He handed Logi a large brass fob attached to a small key in return for a handful of euros. ‘Third floor.’
Logi stretched out on the bed without taking his shoes off. The room was small and dark, with a flat-screen television screwed in place high on the wall and a tangle of wires straggling down from it. He stood up and read the fire instructions in English on the back of the door, and studied the confusing map of the building.
The building appeared to be in two halves and he guessed that two cheap hotels had been combined at some point to make one larger cheap hotel in an awkward L shape. At the end of the corridor was a fire door, where the two had been joined, and the levels of the floors did not quite match up, requiring a step down as you crossed the dividing line. At the far end was another door, this one marked clearly as a fire door, and he eased it open, hoping it wasn’t alarmed. When no bells started to ring, he slid through the door, leaving it ajar behind him, and stepped as gently as he could onto the metal steps that took him down three floors and into a tiny car park.
Pushing open one of the two head-height gates, he found himself on the deserted street. There were no cars and no people to be seen anywhere and he hurried along, leaving the key and brass fob on a doorstep. He avoided the temptation to go back towards the main road with its crowded shops and bars and kept to side streets until he was certain he wasn’t being followed, wondering if the whole exercise had been a waste of time and money.
Soon enough he hit a busy street again and walked like a man with purpose. He looked at his watch and scowled to himself as he decided that this was the moment to make up his mind. He dug his phone from his pocket and scrolled down to the messages, where he had punched in the address of the meeting place, not that he needed to look. He had the strange address memorized by now.
Logi cast about and saw that on the other side of the canal was a taxi rank, but it would be a distance to go, as the nearest bridge was several hundred metres away, lifting like a an arch from the road and crossing the water. He made for it and stood in the middle of the bridge, looking down as a glass-topped barge full of people passed beneath. A couple of small children looked through the glass ceiling at him, laughing as they waved.
He grinned back and gave them a wave, and when the boat had passed he took the SIM card from his phone and dropped it into the boat’s wake, through the dark water, before hurrying towards the taxi rank.
‘The Centraal Station, please,’ he decided as he got in the back of the first taxi in the queue and the driver folded away the newspaper he’d been reading.
Friday
‘Gunnhildur, you were right.’ Gunna swivelled and lifted an eyebrow as Ívar Laxdal sat in Helgi’s chair. ‘Where’s Helgi?’
‘In an interview room with Stefán Ingason. He swears blind he didn’t kill Axel Rútur. His version of events is all over the place, but he has an alibi for last Thursday evening, which has been confirmed.’
‘Reliable?’
Gunna shrugged. ‘One of the students. He had a class until ten, and it seems he stayed behind with one of the prettier students, who kept him there until gone midnight demonstrating some exotic wrestling holds.’
‘He could have met Axel Rútur after midnight, surely?’
‘He could have done, but there was no communication between them, according to the phone records. Unless he knew where to find him, it doesn’t fit, and I still don’t buy the motive. Apart from Aníta Sól, who says that her initial relationship with Stefán had ended some time previously, neither of them had anything to gain by squabbling and there’s no evidence of a dispute between them, no arguments, no fisticuffs.’
Ívar Laxdal smacked one fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘Hell. Blast that narcotics woman. We’ve lost the bastard now.’
‘What happened?’
‘They expected Logi to make a pickup and fly back to Iceland this morning.’
‘And?’
‘He managed to lose his tail yesterday,’ Ívar Laxdal growled. ‘That wasn’t a problem, supposedly, as the European end of the operation thought they knew where he was making the pickup, and if he didn’t show up there, at least they’d be able to tail him from his hotel and through the airport.’
‘But?’ Gunna prompted when he’d been sitting in angry silence for a few moments.
‘No sign of him at the pickup, no sign of him at the hotel and he didn’t show up for his flight to Iceland. All we have is an almost empty suitcase containing the tracker that was slipped into it after it was checked in. That’s it. Vanished.’
‘So now what? I take it his description’s gone to Interpol and if he gets a speeding ticket somewhere then we’ll get him sent back with a stamp on his arse?’
‘Precisely,’ Ívar Laxdal said. ‘That’s the operative word: if. He might keep his nose clean indefinitely and never show up at all.’
‘We’ll see. Maybe he’ll get homesick one day for scoured sheep’s head and decide to come back. You know what Icelanders are like.’
Logi was awake long before the train pulled in. He emerged from the station blinking in the bright sunlight and bemused by the traffic and trams on the street outside. The faces and snatches of conversation he heard around him were familiar from the months spent working with Pétur’s Polish boys, and it felt comforting to be among such recognizable sounds.
It took a while to find a place to change some of his euros into a handful of zloty and then to find a café with a telephone that he could use. He made his call, in which he described as best he could where he was and gave the name of the café to the woman on the other end of the phone, who spoke clear but heavily accented English, making it plain that he would have to wait for a few hours.
Logi had a leisurely breakfast, and afterwards an even more leisurely beer before taking a walk around the station to clear his head. It was a busy place and he stepped smartly as the trams swished past. A couple of hours later he returned to the café and sat with a snack and a coffee as he stared out of the window at the street outside, wondering if he should call again, whether anyone was going to meet him, or if he should attempt to find a place to stay the night.
He was trying to make up his mind whether or not he ought to get back on the train when a broad-hipped woman with a wolf-grey ponytail over one shoulder pushed open the door and looked at him dubiously with her head on one side.
‘Logg-ee?’ she asked.
‘Almost,’ he said as he extended a hand to shake. ‘Logi.’
‘Veronika. Tadeusz says hello,’ she said, a smile spreading across her sun-browned
face. ‘Welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ Logi said. ‘I’m happy to be here.’
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